Read Embers & Ice (Rouge) Online
Authors: Isabella Modra
“Check
mate.”
Ryo
sat back in her chair, her grin wide like a Cheshire cat, leaving Hunter
completely flabbergasted.
“A
twelve-year-old beat me at
chess.
”
Benji
was chuckling to himself in that cute way only nerdy kids do. And then Hunter
was thinking about Eli and how much she missed his laugh.
“What’s
wrong?” asked Ryo.
“Nothing,”
she replied. “Rematch?”
“I
could beat you with my eyes closed.”
Hunter
scoffed good-naturedly. “So… what else is there to do here?”
“Not
much. I mostly hang out here, or in my cell, and I go down to the labs when I
need to. There’s the fitness room, but only Marcus and Mosi bother to use
that.”
“Can
you show me?” Hunter asked, eager to keep moving and wanting to know more about
the prison she was in.
Ryo
jumped up. “Sure! You coming Benji?”
“Uh,
n-no I think I’ll just stay h-here…”
Without
caring, Ryo grabbed Hunter’s wrist and they went marching to the door. Out in
the corridor, Ryo led her behind the stairs to a smaller door with a wonky
handle. As she entered the room, Hunter was hit with the smell of cement and
stale sweat. It was somehow refreshing in comparison with the salty, bacterial
smell everywhere else.
Jet’s
brother Marcus was lying on a bench press lifting weights, with a very large
figure that looked to be about thirty spotting him. Only his features gave away
his youth. The tortured look in his dark eyes from across the room hit Hunter
in the chest. He had dark, almost black skin and the broadest shoulders she’d
ever seen.
“That’s
Mosi,” whispered Ryo. “He hasn’t been the same since he accidentally killed
another kid in the Orb.”
Hunter
glanced down at her, shocked. “He killed someone? How?”
“He
crushed a boy. His power is Terrakinesis – he controls geological matter, and
he has diamond-tough skin. He worked in the mines in Africa.” As they watched
the two boys, Ryo lowered her voice. “It was an accident, and a very unfair
fight. Most fights in the Orb are unfair anyway. One thing you should know
about this place: it’s not separated by age or the level of your powers. There
are kids here who can rip people apart with their bare hands or kill you with a
single spark of kinetic energy. But there are those with a power not even worth
their imprisonment.”
“Why
do they do such horrible things?”
“To
maintain authority and fear. To give the scientists a way to study us in
action. You’ll get used to the fact that the men here are monsters. They have
no regard for humanity.”
Hunter
watched Marcus and Mosi in silence with Ryo, wishing she could close her eyes,
go to sleep and wake up anywhere else but there. And if she could choose, she’d
choose to wake up in Eli’s arms.
“I
have to go,” said Ryo suddenly. “I’m due in the labs for my daily tests. Are
you staying here?”
Hunter
eyed the punching bag and suddenly had the irresistible urge to beat someone
up. There was only a torn yoga mat and a rusty bike left in the corner. “Yeah,
thanks Ryo.”
“Have
fun.” She smiled and was gone.
Some
of the strength she lacked after losing so much blood that morning had returned
after eating and sitting down for a few hours. In order to keep herself fit,
she needed to remain active even when it hurt. After what Mikayla had said in
the bathroom, she couldn’t bear the thought of looking so gaunt.
Hunter
approached the punching bag. It was easy to imagine Dr. Wolfe or Joshua’s face
in the center. Mosi watched her, his black eyes deep and sharp like a hawk. She
found herself thinking that he and Marcus were the most unlikely friends, but
there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense in ICE Institution – or Death
Cave, as Zac had called it – so Hunter saved her thoughts for more important
topics.
Like
escaping.
Deep
down, she knew it wouldn’t be possible without her powers. The fire cheered its
approval inside her, more excited than ever to escape, but Hunter scolded it.
You’re
not much use inside me, are you?
Her
fists pounded into the punching bag, pain zapping all the way up her wrists,
but it felt real and not numb like the rest of her body. She broke out in a
sweat and was so consumed in her thoughts that she didn’t see someone sneak up
behind her and stand on the other side of the bag. His hands curled around it
and held it steady for her.
“You
are holding your fists wrong,” he said in a deep voice, his accent thick and as
powerful as her punches.
Hunter
stopped and breathed heavily, peering around the bag. Mosi wasn’t wearing a
shirt, and immediately her eyes found a device that stuck out of the skin on
his left peck. It flashed 35, then 39, and back and forth. It was measuring his
heart rate.
“How
am I… s’posed to hold it then?” she asked defensively, dizziness breaking down
on her again.
He
grabbed her wrist and before she could yank it back, his calloused hands were
curling her fingers and bending her thumb over the top. She was surprisingly
frozen, feeling as though he might scatter away like a frightened gazelle if
she moved. He was much bigger up close, and more muscular than a heavyweight
wrestler. Hunter wondered if he preferred living as a prisoner in the
institution to living outside as a slave.
“Punch
here,” he said, “and you won’t hurt your knuckles as much.”
She
flexed her wrists and shot a glance at Marcus, who was sitting on the bench
with his hands clasped between his knees and his face impassive as he watched
her.
She
turned back to Mosi. “Where’d you learn that?”
“In
my home country, there is much fighting. I learn a lot of things because I
listen and watch.”
“Well
thanks for the tip,” she replied, not sure what to make of his cryptic talk.
Mosi backed away from her slowly.
“You
are welcome.” With that, he sauntered to the door, Marcus not far behind him.
“If
you show me another picture of this girl, Jenny, I’m going to strangle you.”
Jennifer
Smart bit her lip and clicked out of the photo viewer on the computer screen.
Eli sat back in the swivel chair, his face in his hands. A long sigh fell out
of his mouth.
“I’m
sorry Eli, I thought that one of these might jog your memory.”
“Why
do you think showing me pictures of this girl will help me remember her? Why is
she so important, anyway?”
“Because–”
Jenny stood and walked over to the tray of coffee, pouring herself her sixth
cup and ignoring the buzz throughout her body. “That benefit was the night you
met. Hunter told me all about you when she visited me in the hospital. You went
to Prom together.”
“Remind
me again how this happened? How did I suddenly fall so in love with this girl,
I mean she’s not my type at all. Guys fall all over her at school. We’re
nothing alike.”
Jenny
turned off the computer and put a hand gently on his knee.
“A
girl like Hunter needed someone like you. You were a nice change. Trust me,
Eli, Hunter would have done anything for you.”
“Then
where is she? Does she think I’m dead or something because that freak put me to
sleep and took away my memories?”
Jenny
fiddled with her fingers.
I am
so
not the right person for this
conversation
, she thought.
Eli
stared up at her through narrowed eyes for a long time. “Did you ever see a man
while you were asleep?”
Jenny’s
heart started beating fast. She thought the figure was just part of a dream. In
a hollow voice, she whispered, “You saw him too?”
“I
saw something. It was a man I think, but he flickered… I never got to see his
face. That’s when I woke up. I thought it was just my imagination.”
Jenny
wiped her hands down her face.
None of this makes sense. I’m healed, Eli has
no memory, and we both saw the same figure just before we woke up here in the
lab. Could it be an angel, or was it just… a dream?
“I
don’t know who it was Eli, but I think that’s what brought us back. You have no
idea how completely rare it is that we survived cryonics; it’s near impossible
to recover all emotions and mental characteristics. If you ask me, Joshua just
barely got by with us. But,” she added in a small voice, “he feels terrible about
it.”
“Are
you guys in love or something?”
Jenny
looked at Eli and laughed. “Not even if hell freezes over.”
“Then
what’s his deal?”
Jenny
really didn’t want to attempt to describe Joshua’s deranged actions to someone
who hardly knew him at all – even she couldn’t say she understood Joshua – but
the poor boy was helpless without his memories.
“He…
he loves Hunter. More than anything. But there’s a part of him that isn’t
exactly human. It comes with his powers.”
“Right,
the… ice thing. Doesn’t that freak you out? I mean if it weren’t for that door,
I’d be outta here in two seconds flat.”
Jenny
looked at the door, wondering if she would leave as well if she got the chance.
She definitely wanted to when she woke up, but she was afraid and knew nothing.
Things had changed.
“I
guess everything’s complicated now,” she said to him. “And-”
Eli’s
hand whipped up suddenly. “Do you hear someone?”
Jenny
froze, listening. Sure enough, muffled sounds were coming from the other side
of the door.
“Joshua’s
home,” she sighed. “I hope he has take-out.”
“No,”
said Eli in a whisper, “Jenny. There’s more than one voice.”
“What?”
“Shh!”
Eli got to his feet and lightly crossed the room. He waved her over, and Jenny
shakily followed. “Listen.”
With
her ear pressed against the steel door, she could just hear soft male voices
coming from the room beyond.
And
neither of them were Joshua’s.
The
sound of the booming gong woke Hunter from a particularly terrible nightmare,
but she felt worse awake than asleep. She rubbed her eyes and winced at the
bright light in the corridors. Her head thumped as though she’d fallen out of
bed in her sleep. Her nightmares worked her so hard that she was drenched in
sweat and heaving. If she hadn’t been wearing her bracelet, she would have set
her entire cell on fire.
Hunter
needed to shower before she went to breakfast, but the moment she lifted
herself from her hard mattress, her cell door opened and the guard with the
roaming eyes and creepy tattoo – Jamison, his name was – stood there to greet
her.
“Let’s
go, Harrison.”
“Give
me a break.”
“Couple
more days and you’ll get used to the routine,” he said with a smirk. “Besides,
you’re not having breakfast. Dr. Wolfe wants you down in the labs for testing.”
Hunter
walked beside Jamison to the stairs, her empty stomach in knots. She’d
completely forgotten that Dr. Wolfe had plans to inspect her even closer than
he had yesterday.
Speaking
of close inspection; Hunter felt Jamison’s eyes on her as they walked. When she
shot a sideways glance at him, his eyes were hungry. Getting looks from guys at
school was one thing – having a sleazy man rake her up and down was ten times
worse.
Are the guards that deprived that they have to perve on mutants like
me? Do they live here, away from women and booze and bars and the real world?
The
corridors were starting to fill with kids waking up and heading down to
breakfast. She and Jamison avoided a bunch of girls crowding around the
bathroom door, pushing their way in. Despite the grime and awkward open space, Hunter
longed for a shower.
They
marched straight for the elevator and took it down two levels. The doors opened
to reveal a small entryway and a sliding glass door. Past it, she found herself
facing a long corridor. Windows lined the entire right wall through which she
could see a busy science lab almost the size of the breakfast hall. Low
cubicles by the dozen were scattered throughout the room. Men and women in
white lab coats went about their work, testing and typing on computers and
fumbling with papers. Jamison yanked on her arm and she nearly slipped on the
linoleum floors. She made a point to keep her eyes straight. A scientist with a
brown scruffy beard passed them, but did not look twice at her.
Her
nerves were starting to build. It didn’t help that Jamison led her through a
door marked ‘Surgery Rooms’. Like the room she was in yesterday with Dr. Wolfe,
this one also smelt like sickly anti-bacterial ointment. It was completely
dark, but for the light that shone down on the stretcher and the many blinking
dials on the machines.
“Dr.
Wolfe and his assistant will be here shortly,” said Jamison. He picked up two
items of clothing – a thin, lycra sports bra and matching bike shorts that
would work better as underwear and were almost see-through – from the chair
beside the door. “In the meantime, he’s instructed you put this on.”
Hunter
fumbled with the flimsy set he threw at her. Jamison vanished and the door was
locked behind her.
Using
the privacy of the surgery room, Hunter stripped off. Her eyes roamed the empty
space and caught site of a pin-up board on the far wall. Immediately and
without thinking, she went over to inspect them. Amidst pages of information,
there was a mix of children’s drawings that made Hunter frown. Dr. Wolfe didn’t
seem to be the type of man to care about a child’s messy pictures. Hunter
peered at the closed door and then started rifling through papers, even though
she was sure he wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave important information out on
display.
Hunter
lifted up a graph and found a glossy image of Dr. Wolfe on a busy street in New
York. He was getting into a yellow cab. The photo was taken in the middle of
the day from a distance, like something a detective might snap for a case.
And
as she gazed at the photo, it hit her. She
had
met Dr. Wolfe before;
they shared a cab on a windy night after she almost set Eli on fire. The man on
the other side was Dr. Wolfe. She recognized the smell in the lab and those
oyster-gray eyes.
He
was watching me even before Eli knew. How long was he watching me, watching us?
Feeling
sick, Hunter stepped back and ran to the door. It was locked, as she expected.
Hunter looked around for some means of escape, unable to rid herself of the
image of Dr. Wolfe in that dark coat sitting beside her in the cab.
He saw
the fire in my veins,
she thought as she recalled their conversation.
What
did he say, that I had a blood deficiency? Then he said something about… being
different. Urgh, he knew!
A
key turned in the lock. Hunter’s heart rate picked up speed. Dr. Wolfe strode
in, followed by an older woman with ratty brown hair and wrinkly skin. She
couldn’t have been more than forty.
“Good
morning, Miss Harrison,” said Dr. Wolfe. He placed a tray of steel utensils on
a bench beside the surgery bed – laced with straps like the other – and turned
to face her. They both wore the standard white lab coat, hospital shoes and
mask around their necks. The woman had absolutely no emotion as she stood
beside the doctor, and in the light from the surgery table they looked like Dr.
Frankenstein and his robotic wife. “I trust you slept well.”
Almost
in spite of herself, Hunter smiled. She pointed to the wall where the photo
still hung. “You were watching me, weren’t you?”
The
doctor rested his cool, all-knowing gaze on hers. “I’ve been watching you for a
while now. Joshua did well to hide you away for most of your life, but not many
can escape my watchful eye. I know how to find people like
you
.”
“But
you took your time, didn’t you? When I shared that taxi with you, it was months
before the Agents came. Why?”
He
shrugged and crossed his legs, leaning back against his chair. “I was
interested in the way you lived your life. You had just recently discovered
what you could do, after all. I wanted to observe you from an outsider’s
perspective. To see how you reacted to your emotions, to see whether you acted
the hero or stood back as I’m sure Joshua instructed you to.”
“I
don’t regret my actions.”
“Oh
but I’m sure you waged a war with yourself about rescuing that girl locked in the
freezer, am I right?”
Hunter
frowned at the doctor’s elated expression.
How did he know that Kate was
locked in the freezer? Wait…
Hunter recalled the moment she heard the young
girl’s screams and saw the padlocked freezer door, remembered the wonderful
heat and the adrenaline. She never questioned why Kate had been locked inside,
nor did anyone else. Not until now.
“It
was a test,” she breathed, gazing in horror at the doctor. “You locked Kate in
and started the fire, didn’t you?”
“I
may have initiated the blaze,” he said smugly. “And you needed a challenge, my
dear. It’s a part of discovering what kind of hero you want to be.”
Feeling
suddenly sick, Hunter eyed the door.
Dr.
Wolfe tutted. “We have work to do this morning,” he said. Then he indicated to the
woman. “This is my wonderful assistant and colleague, Dr. Hosking. Today we’re
going to hurry through the basic check in procedures and hopefully have you out
by lunch. We’ll start immediately with the X-rays.”
As
Dr. Hosking marched over to the large and harshly modern X-ray, Dr. Wolfe
opened a screen that seemed to pop out of nowhere. Hunter couldn’t even see the
monitor. The image was as clear as life itself, the calculations and numberings
so small she could hardly read them. Was this some kind of new technology she
hadn’t seen yet?
I’ve only been here a few days and look what I’ve missed
out on. It’s a freaking scene from
Iron
Man
.
Dr.
Wolfe grumbled. “Yes, I see you didn’t have much luck sleeping last night.”
Hunter
cautiously approached the screen beside Dr. Wolfe. The image she saw was her
cell from a camera in the top right corner of the room. She was tossing back
and forth rather quickly, as if the tape were on fast-forward, but the time
went by as normal. Letters and numbers and heart-rate lines squiggled beside
the images. Dr. Wolfe remained very thoughtful as he watched the screen.
“Do
you remember any of your nightmares, Hunter?”
Though
she couldn’t bear to talk about it, she wasn’t sure she had enough energy to
think of a convincing lie. Dr. Wolfe didn’t know that Joshua killed her one
reason for living – at least, she hoped not. Her nightmares were of Eli lying
in a blanket of snow while Joshua stood by laughing wickedly like a villain in
a cartoon movie. Though that was not the same as the broken, desperate man she
walked away from in the warehouse, it was the only way she saw him in her
dreams.
She
shook her head.
“Hmm.
But you slept through the night – a whole fourteen hours, I see – without
waking?”
“Yes.”
Dr.
Wolfe nodded thoughtfully. “Right. Well we’ll keep an eye on that and see how
we can improve it. For now, let’s begin the X-rays.”
Hunter
turned her eyes away from watching her jerking form in the dark room. She
couldn’t decide what was worse as she was forced to lie down on a bright, cold
table like an animal in a veterinary clinic: seeing the one she loved die over
and over again in her dreams, or living a horrific reality in a mutant museum
as a permanent lab rat.
Hours
later, she stumbled back upstairs to the breakfast hall, starving, light-headed
and feeling as though every inch of her body had been poked, inspected and
photographed for a file she’d never see again. Dr. Wolfe had taken every kind
of sample of her DNA he could without removing any vital organs. Her
fingerprints, skin cells, hair strands, bone construction, regular body
temperature, heart rate and blood type were all in Dr. Wolfe’s system. But for
now, she didn’t care. All she wanted was food.
The
breakfast hall was almost empty. She assumed it was the very beginning of
lunch. A group of kids about half her age were chewing their food like cows;
slowly and unenthusiastically. She hurried to the line-up and gathered whatever
the women behind the glass could give. Then Hunter sat down at a table and
started stuffing herself.
She
let her mind wander to escape her surroundings and the fact that her food
tasted like vomit. Lost in the moment, Hunter didn’t realize she was being
watched. She met and locked gazes with two brown eyes under thick-set eyebrows,
glistening with pain and emptiness. They were the same eyes she remembered from
her dreams last night.
He
sat a table-length away, not eating and staring at her intently. Something in
his eyes sparked a strange feeling in her stomach. She couldn’t translate the
look he was giving her.
“That’s
Will.”
She
jumped almost a mile in the air and started choking on her food. Fearne was
gazing at her dreamily from right beside her on the bench. Hunter washed down
her food with a swig of water.
“Sorry,”
she puffed, “you scared me.”
“I
didn’t mean to. I just noticed you sitting alone and thought you might like
some company.”
Hunter
looked down at the young girl – who didn’t seem so crazy now – and smiled.
“Thanks.”
“That’s
Will,” she said again. It seemed important to her that Hunter knew his name.
“He always stares at people, so don’t take it personal.”
Her
southern accent was more definable now that she wasn’t living in the land of
the fairies. Hunter wondered where she came from. Though, after hearing some of
the other abysmally depressing stories, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“He
looks quite sick.”
“He
always looks that way. That’s because Dr. Wolfe chops him up every day and then
puts him back together.”
Whatever
was in Hunter’s mouth was immediately spat back out on her tray. Fearne giggled
behind her hand and as Hunter wiped her mouth, she thought she caught the ghost
of a smile on Will’s face before it vanished.
“He
chops him up?
Why?”
“To
see how his bones and skin and stuff regenerate. That’s Wills power; he heals
himself.”
“Why
does he have a scar then?”
A
light appeared in Fearne’s eyes. For some reason, this pleased her. “You
noticed that?”
“Well…
yeah. A lot of you have scars.”
“We
do,” she said.
“I’ve
heard that not many here live past their twenties. How old is Will?”
“Twenty,”
she replied. “He’s very developed for his age because of his cell structure and
rapid growth. He’s practically immortal.”
“Practically?”
Fearne’s
face fell. “Well… no one’s immortal. But Will’s as close as anyone. It comes at
a price though. They pump a ton of medicine into his veins, stuff that makes
him really weak all the time from being under anesthetic. And they’ve tried
a
lot
of things.”